Keep the noise down please, conductor tells opera singers

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The spectacle of a rotund woman blasting her audience with vibrato has become a trope of opera, summed up in the adage: the show ain’t over till the fat lady sings.

However, one conductor has become so irritated by the warbling of opera singers that he has decided to record three of Mozart’s best known works with only delicate singing in an attempt to recapture the subtlety of performances in the composer’s own lifetime.

Teodor Currentzis, who conducts the MusicAeterna orchestra and choir in Perm, Russia, has stripped out bombastic singing from his recordings of Don Giovanni, The Marriage of